Tony Rowan was ready to throw up his hands the first week of the season.

"Basketball right now is a no-touching sport," Rochelle's first-year girls basketball coach said. "It's ridiculous how many fouls they are calling. And it's all from the state tournament, where there was a brawl. So now they are going to fix everything by calling it tight."

That didn't fix last March's Class 2A boys state title game. Referees called four technicals in the first half, three against South Holland Seton Academy, and ejected Seton Academy's leading scorer early in the second quarter. Emotions just rose higher. The IHSA even threatened to cancel the game at halftime. At the end, after Harrisburg had rallied to win, Seton coaches left the medal stand without accepting their runner-up trophy.

The IHSA then sent out notice that they were making a "point of emphasis" to call more hand-checking fouls on the perimeter, and referenced the Seton Hall-Harrisburg game as why. For all games. Both boys and girls.

"It does get tiring to have to adjust your game because of something that happened in an inner-city boys game or downstate," said Eastland girls coach Colleen Henze, whose Cougars (11-0, 3-0) lead the NUIC East. "You hear, 'You can't hang on the rim or you can't run out on the other team.' That seems ridiculous for girls to listen to."

But, after a month of play, coaches say it's not as bad as they feared. Not good, but not terrible.

Henze says sometimes the Cougars get called for fouls even when they just use "a hot stove touch" to make sure they know where their opponent is.

"When we were warned of this, we tried to instill it in the girls with drills, making them move their feet with their hands behind their back," Henze said. "It hasn't helped much."

Still, Henze, and several coaches, said the refs who call it are consistent and the refs who call the game the way they have in years past are also consistent.

"But there is so much variance from crew to crew," said Rowan, who has scrapped his man-to-man defensive philosophy in favor of a zone to keep the Hubs out of foul trouble. "That just hurts the kids; 14- to -18-year-old kids need something to be stable. Instead, each game, it's up in the air."

"We are encouraging the kids to go directly to the basket," Curry said. "Don't cut or anything; go directly to the basket and make them get in front of you or put their hands on you."

Page 2 of 3 - Auburn is once again the smallest, quickest NIC-10 boys contender, but coach Bryan Ott said calling touch fouls on the perimeter only helps quicker teams if refs also call players for offensive fouls.

But Ott said the new stricter enforcement has all been in favor of the offense. That does no favors for the Knights, who rely on harassing defense.

"One of the things that has always frustrated me as a coach is the way an offensive player is allowed to lead with the forearm and push off when the defender is sliding with him," Ott said. "The rules interpretation emphasis this year listed three examples, and one of them was supposed to be looking for that as well, but I am still looking to see that called."

Ott also wonders how long this point of emphasis will last.

"There were many years in the past where the rules interpretation meeting was about the rough play inside," Ott said. "That was going to be a point of emphasis a lot. And then the season would arrive and you never saw any difference in how that was called."

Everyone sees a difference now - at least in half of their games - but players aren't too bothered.

"It's a big difference. You get called for fouls even when it's a little tap, tap, tap," Auburn's Melena Burke said. "We do like to play that hard D. We've just got to work on it and adjust."

"You always have to adjust to the officiating," Hononegah's Amy Dal Santo said. "You can't complain. It gives you a chance to go to the free throw line and knock some shots down."

Others, like Rochelle's Rowan, have changed their defense.

"I am seeing an awful lot of zones," Eastland's Henze said. "We play a lot of man-to-man defense, so it does effect our team. Sometimes I think we should change our philosophy. When you put the same girl (Aquin point guard Haley Chang) at the free throw line 10 straight times, like we did against Aquin last week, I wonder."

Everyone is coping with the change without any of the drastic results some feared. But that doesn't mean they saw a reason for any change.

"Why is there a point of emphasis every year?" Freeport boys coach Danny Turner said. "Just officiate the game. The entire game. Now they are blind to other things that are important. Where is the blocking call? Where is the charge? Where is the foul when the shooter gets hit after he releases the ball? Those calls aren't being called.

"Just emphasize the whole game. Everything. You don't have to emphasize one area of a game to control it.